Beneath the Outside xItachi love storyx
by Signed.with.love
Summary: Meet Kokoroyoi Chie. A girl with a painful past and an unstable future, she falls for Itachi Uchiha in this original fanfiction. Find out how and the bumps along the way in this new spin on Naruto!
1. Part 1

This story starts after you fight Itachi.  
Your name is Kokoroyoi Chie, Kokoro for short. You have been told all your life that it was Itachi who killed your best friend and her family. Your own family was killed by someone else. But even though you find out later that you have been told lies, you still tried to kill Itachi--you knocked him out after a long battle, but were too weak to finish him. You faint after he is out.  
In the night, when he wakes up, he sees you sleeping on the ground, apparently where you fell. He pities you for some reason, and by some strange miracle Itachi the pitiless murderer covers you with his coat to keep you warm. He then sleeps leaning on a tree, and later on he moves closer to you to keep himself warm in the chilly night air.

You wake up in the early morning. The sun shines through the leaves and the lite mist, and the birds chirp and chorus. You feel something smooth on your bare arms, and something warm on your back. You roll over slightly and crane your neck around to look at what was touching you. you saw the black kimono style coat with the blood red flowers on you as your blanket, and when you see the man's face you gasp. It's Itachi, keeping you warm. But you're too tired to care, so you doze off again.

When you wake up again, Itachi is cooking two fishes on the fire.  
When he sees you stir, he says, "Up and at em. We move soon"  
"We?" you ask, incredulous.  
"We, unless you would prefer to travel these woods alone." His voice was so cool and calm. You just gasped again and thought it over briefly. You decide to go with him, for now at least.  
"Fine. But...why? I tried to kill you," you say.  
"Yes, but here I am." he replied, pulling the fish off the flames.  
"But"  
"But you spared me, when you had the chance to take my life as you had sworn over your dead family you would do. For that, I think I at least owe you passage out of the woods." Itachi looked back at the fire, then kicked dust over it. He tossed you a fish as you folded his coat neatly and handed it to him. "Eat while you walk," he said.

So the two of you walked through the sunny, dappled forest together for awhile, and Itachi never put his coat on, he just slung it over his shoulder and used his other hand to eat his fish, which he had cooked quite well. After you had been walking silently for awhile and when you just couldn't stand the silence anylonger, you decided to start a conversation, but you didn't know what to say. Then you looked at Itachi, and you noticed he wasn't wearing his signature headband anymore.  
"Where...where's your headband?" you ask him, timidly. He glances over his shoulder at you.  
"In my kunai pouch." He said calmly. You blush a little, for some reason.  
"I only where it during fights or in villages." He continued. Then it was silent again. "So tell me," he said, hopping over a stream, "What did you dream of last night"  
"Dream of...?" What kind of a question was that?  
"You were crying in your sleep. I'm just curious," he said, trying to assure you he was innocent. You just thought back to last night. You had been dreaming of watching Sasuke Uchiha kill a person whose face you couldn't see, but you didn't want to tell Itachi that you thought it had been him dying. So you just told him about the rest of it.  
"So, you've never seen someone die before, and it made you cry?" he asked after you'd spoken.  
"No. I've seen...many people die. I don't know why I cried. It was as if I was going to miss the dead person...very much." you said, trying not to catch his eyes. You were afraid if you did, you would blush even deeper than the red on his coat. In the silence after that conversation, you just gnawed on your thoughts. Now you were so sure that you had watched Itachi die in your dream. And it made you sad. Just then, however, Itachi stopped, looked at you, then opened his mouth to speak.  
"Kokoroyoi..." he said.

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	2. Part 2

"Kokoro, I-" Itachi said. You were waiting to hear the rest of what he had to say when his eyes went wide just as the hair on the back of your neck prickled. "DUCK!" he cried, leaping over you by pushing your back down as he went over your head. He landed just as you heard the thump. You turned to see him pulling a giant shuriken out of his stomach, spitting out blood. He koffed, and stuck the shuriken into the ground as the attacker made himself seen, via leaping from his perch in the trees. Itachi looked at the man darkly. You picked up the shuriken and watched the shinobi. If he tried to hurt either of you again, he'd die quick. Very quick. Not like Itachi wasn't gonna kill him anyway.

He was wearing all black and a black mask, and he used his chakra to try and blend into the woods. You threw your shuriken to the left side without evn looking, and you heard the thump and moan as the shuriken hit it's mark. Itachi turned and looked at you, incredulous. He threw a kunai that landed on the man's neck, and then he went to retrieve the giant shuriken. It might be useful later. You were wearing a reddish midlength overshirt over a midlength black tanktop, so you pulled off your overshirt. Itachi gasped when he turned around and saw you pulling your shirt off, but you payed him no mind. You started to rip it into long strips to be used as a bandage. You looked at him, and kept ripping the shirt.

"Come over here and take off your shirt. That wound won't heal itself, you know," you say as Itachi complies, somewhat reluctantly.

You see why he was reluctant. He has muscles the likes of which you've never seen before, but he also has scars that no man would be proud of. But they aren't ugly, knotted scars, they are old, healed scars. One trails accross his back, from the left shoulder to the right hip, one winds from his right shoulder blade over the collarbone and down accross the chest. A third and fourth form an x on his left side/torso area. Itachi has seen some pretty brutal fights to leave scars like that, although the fights were probably fought before he became a shinobi.

He looks at you as a stream of blood winds down his torso from the shuriken's wound. You dont gape or say nothing, and he just lets you wrap the shirt around the wound. When your satisfied that it will stay in place, you fold the excess strips and stick them in your pouch, then strap the giant shuriken to your back while Itachi puts his shirt back on. It's too hot for his coat now.

"Soooo...now which way? I've seen that clan before. They're like wolves- they always travel in packs." You say to him as he studies at the sky.

"First we eat lunch. Then we move north. There's a town not far from here. You could get some info for us there...I'll stay in the woods. All the people here would recognize this cloak far too easily." He says to you. You nod and let it drop, then follow him into the forest. He leads you to a stream, where he stabs two fish and a crawdad in one swipe. Cooked briefly by his fire jutsu since there's no time for camp, you both eat then are moving again. The crawdad was too small to eat, so he throws it back after cooking the fish.

"Do you know any other jutsus?" Itachi throws the question back as you're walking swiftly with him. He apparently meant jutsus other than the simple ones you'd used in the fight.

"Sure I do. I am a shinobi...just not legally," you say.

"What jutsus?"

"Mostly my own techniques. There is one that I was taught by a wiseman once...the stone jutsu."

"Stone jutsu?"

"Yeah. You make a pillar of rock come up out of the ground where ever you need one."

"Hm."

Then you walked in silence once more. Within twenty minutes, you had reached the village. Itachi told you to act like you were just visiting, looking for your brother or something. Lots of shinobi come through here, he said. Just ask around.

So you do. You walk in as if you're just another person, not in any hurry. You look around as if searching for someone, then start to ask random people if they've seen a man with all black on recently, do you know what he was up to, where did he go after that. You try a few people to be sure, then you're out of there. Itachi finds you out side the village and asks you what you found out.

"There's been a whole group of sound ninja through here a few times. They went north, toward the village hidden in sand. Sounds like Orochimaru's up to something." You say calmly. Itachi's eyes narrow.

"How do you know about the sound ninja's master?" He asks.

"I'm a lone shinobi, I don't live in any village. I live everywhere. I make friends everywhere. I've even found a kid who had a crush once. One of them was about fifty, worked for the village of sound, got drunk and blurted out to me that he worked for Orochimaru. Bloody fool died then and there...kunai through his throat. Oh yeah, did I tell you Orochimaru's after me now 'cause I know?" you say, blushing because you feel stupid now. Itachi's face smooths over and is expressionless once more. He turns and walks away down the path, saying,

"C'mon. You're more interesting than I first thought. But we have to move, Kokoro. Let's go." 


	3. Part 3

You and Itachi keep walking down the road, heading toward the village of the sand. Itachi was just itching for something interesting to happen, you could feel it. You two deserted the road for the sake of not being noticed and cut through the woods instead. After you'd been walking for awhile, you come upon a gorgeous little pond with a small waterfall. The water was crystal clear, and it reminded you of another time, another place.

FLASHBACK You were standing by a nice little pool, dangling your feet in the water, splashing with your toes. You were about seven. You hear footsteps behind you, and when you turn around you see your father, panting and wounded. He reaches down and grabs you, slings you over his shoulder and runs. You look in the direction that he came from, screaming for him to tell you what's going on and where he's taking you, and what you see behind you breaks your heart. Your brothers are fighting bravely against a much larger team of elite shinobi from a variety of villages, and your brothers are being hurt and slaughtered. Finally, your father puts you down, and runs back to help them. He whispers goodbye, bades you stay put, and goes back. You hear them all screaming, them and all of your other family, screaming as one by one they are all killed. But it was not the Akatsuki who were killing them; it was a team of shinobi sent by the five Kages. And you were all alone when it was done.  
END FLASHBACK

As Itachi stands behind you, lost in his own thoughts as he observes the beauty of the pond, a small tear runs down your face. You clench your fists in the grass, resisting the sob. The tear falls to the water, making a little plunk sound. Itachi looks at you, and when he sees you are crying he says nothing and does nothing. He goes back to thinking, then glances at the sun.  
"C'mon, we have to move. We don't have anymore time to waste here," Itachi says, looking at you oddly but still not saying anything. You had been on your knees, but now you stood slowly, then as you turned to start walking you pulled out a headband. It was inscribed with the insignia for the Village Hidden in the Mist. When Itachi saw it, he was somewhat surprised.

"You're from the Village of Mist..?" he asked you.

"No, this was my...my father's. I...I found it, after...after he was killed," you say slowly, traces of the tears still in your voice. You fingered the insignia.

"Hmm, I see. Don't you have a headband? A village?" Itachi asked you as he began to set the pace through the forest once more.

"Nope. No headband for me. I'm a loner--taught and trained by those from many villages. Like I said before, I live everywhere, I belong in every village," you reply smoothly, the previous trace of tears gone completely now. Again, the two of you walk in silence. For a longer time than usual this time. It was creepy, almost, but you figured that it wasn't necesarily a bad thing. Just an almost creepy thing. Just another silent walk.

But this time there was definitely something strange about the silence. You stop to listen, and then it strikes you.

"Itachi, wait. Something's wrong. There's no--no birds," you whisper the last words, and a chill runs down your spine. You knew something was up now. "Why aren't there any birds? Itachi?"

"Because this is the path to my home. My friends either scare the birds off or kill them for sport. You can join our little team if you like--after you prove your worth to our leader, of course. After you prove your worth to the rest of us," Itachi said.

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	4. Part 4

As you and Itachi keep walking, he starts to think of what he'll tell the leader and the others when they see you following him. He first recalls your name, then he makes a dangerous realization. Your clan name-Chie. The legendary Chie clan. That would mean that you could...

You of course don't know he's made this discovery. You two keep walking, the eerie silence holding any kind of uplifting feeling at bay within you. He seems totally at peace, totally familiar with it. But you couldn't help but remember the forest that you had known once as happy, but after the slaughter and the betrayal it had been a silent place, just like this. Silent in comparison to what it had once been.

FLASHBACK "Ayako! Ayako!" you cried, running after her. She was your identical twin, your clone, only she wasn't related to you. She was your personal diary, your confidant, your very best friend.  
She turned and looked at you. Just watched you come.

"Huh? Kokoroyoi? What do you want? Father said I couldn't play with you today, but..." she grinned at you happily. "You can walk with me to the house if you want!" You grin and run after her. The two of you laugh and giggle over various things on your way to her home.

The next day you awake to hear a scream. Ayako doesn't live very far away, hers is the manor style house in the center of the large land plot her father inherited, contiguous to your own. You recognize the voice instantly as hers.

At her manor house, Ayako is watching the team of shinobi put a knife to her father's throat, forcing him to tell them where and how to find you and your family. (You aren't there, so you don't know this yet.) She backs into a corner with tears in her eyes as one of them puts a kunai to her mother's throat. She covers her ears and squeezes her eyes tightly shut when the kunais start to puncture the skin on her parent's necks. Then her parents admit that since your family moved their home to a different place on the same land plot, they no longer know how to wind through the forest surrounding it, but they assure the shinobi that with such a skilled team, it will be a breeze to find the house. The ninjas tighten their grips on the kunai, and trickles of blood run down into the shirt collars. The kunais keep digging into the wounds until finnaly Ayako's mother yelps loudly in pain, tears showing on her face.

Ayako cries out with tears streaming down her face, saying desparately that she'll show the shinobi where to find you if only they will swear to leave her family alone. The shinobi agree, and those who are not at her parents' throats gather behind her as she swiftly sets the pace into the forest, sobbing all the while that she is about to help these monsters murder her very best friend, her not-blood-sister. But she leads them onward, and then she hears both a male and a female scream. Her parents. She stops, but it is too late. The shinobi have already spotted your house, and her family is being killed. She drops to her knees and sobs louder and harder than ever before, feeling so terribly hurt and alone and empty and angry. The shinobi advance on your house.

Meanwhile, you are sitting there against a tree, hearing your family scream even as they try to fight off the enemy. When it is done you are all alone, every one of your relatives was in that house and now every one of them is dead. One shinobi spots you sitting there, paralyzed in fear and sadness and emptiness, sobbing your heart out quietly there alone. He casually throws a kunai guaranteed to strike and kill you, but just as you look up and see the kunai someone else's body blocks it, and you see the tip protrude from her back.

It's Ayako. She hunches over, drops of blood and tears falling from her face. She grips her stomach and falls to her knees, shoulders shaking in emotion, pain and tears. Her forehead buries itself in the pine needles on the ground. You crawl forward desparately, reaching for her, but all of your pain and tears and willpower cannot save her. She is already dead, even as she says,  
"For you, Kokoro. They lied to me... They said they would spare them... This...is...all...my...fault"  
END FLASHBACK

After the battle and the death of your friend, you swore to avenge her, to someday find out who did it and why. Later you pieced together all that had happened in Ayako's home, and now as you finished remembering it was so incredibly hard to fight off tears. Itachi just kept walking and you just kept following, feeling hard for the cure to your sudden rush of guilt. The same guilt you felt every time you thought back to that painful day.

'I should have known back then...I could have helped her...I could have kept her from dying, I should have known. I should have read the manuscripts as father had instructed, should have memorized how to use the technique... But it's too late now. She's way too far away.' you thought.

You look up at the sky through the treetops and Itachi does the same. It's lunch time. He goes out to find something to eat, but this time you kneel and place two fingers on the ground, focusing your chakra to the nerve endings in your fingers making them super sensitive. You can feel every single vibration in the earth, from the footsteps of an ant to the tunneling of worms. You search for the vibrations of water or game, and you feel a stream to the west of you and a flock of pheasant in the bush nearby.

"There's a stream to the west. And.." you say, throwing a carefully aimed kunai into the proper bush. The pheasants thunder up out of the shrubbery, but one lays dead. Itachi fetches it, then he sets about preparing it. You help him, doing the plucking while he gathers fire wood. Then you gut it and cut out the parts you won't use, head and feet and such. When the two of you are finished eating, you're on the trail again.

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	5. Part 5

The two of you continue through the forest. Itachi had mentioned heading for his home, but you assumed that you still had a ways to go. You were wrong.

Itachi's home was a house with two floors, and it was clearly a shinobi hideout. It was well concealed in the forest, and the surrounding area was riddled with traps that you hadn't noticed until you saw all the various shuriken and kunai on the backs of trees, each and every small weapon poised to hit whoever walked past them. Itachi looked at you for a moment, then turned and strode calmly toward the house. A man with yellow hair that hung over his left eye was sitting on the roof with a twig in his mouth.

"Well well, if it isn't our gallant and quiet hero, Uchiha Itachi," the man said, watching Itachi stride toward the house. Itachi stopped and looked up at him.

"Shut up, Diedara," he said. Then he continued on toward the house. "C'mon, Kokoroyoi. He'll probably start to throw things if you just stand there and stare at him like that." Itachi said without looking back at you. He stepped up onto the doorstep and opened the door, and you quickly followed. Diedara jumped down and came in after you.

The interior wasn't overly clean or dirty, but instead looked rather casual. There was an occasional piece of decor on the walls, a fish skull here, an ancient spearhead there, a shuriken collection over there. There wasn't much to say criminals lived here in the lower level. It was just another ninja's house.  
The floor was barren as well; except for the furniture of course, there wasn't anything on the floor. You heard Diedara's feet tak tak on the floor behind you, and he came around in front of you and studied your face critically.

"So who's your girlfriend, Itachi?" Diedara asked. Itachi plopped onto a couch and clasped his hands behind his head.

"She's not a 'girlfriend', Diedara. Just a travlemate. A tagalong." Itachi said closing his eyes and sighing.

"So what's her name, loverboy?" Diedara said, still studying your face.

"Kokor--hey, I'm not a loverboy, you idiot. Why don't you ask her what her name is? Or are you afraid?" Itachi said, opening his eyes and looking at Diedara.

"Ok then, what's your name and how did you get to be Itachi's little tagalong"  
Diedara asked you, straightening.

"I am Kokoroyoi. And I'm not his tagalong, he asked me to come along." you say smoothly, keeping eye contact with Diedara. He just 'hmm'ed, and crossed his arms. He turned and collapsed onto a large chair opposite Itachi, who had swung his feet up onto the couch. You lean on the wall and pull out your ocarina, then start to polish up the small round instrument with a soft cloth. For a moment there is silence until a blue-skinned man and a man with an orange swirly patterned mask walk in. Before the blue skinned man can say anything, though, Itachi speaks.

"Shut up about the girl, Kisame," he said, closing his eyes again. You watch them, but keep polishing your ocarina. The one called Kisame closes his mouth. Then the one with the mask is about to pipe up, but Itachi says without opening his eyes, "You too, Tobi."

"So where's Zetso and the boss?" Itachi asks Kisame. Kisame shrugs.

"Who knows? They left, saying something about the Kazekage, but as far as I know they went in the wrong direction to get there," he replied.

"They said the Misukage, you idiot, not kazekage," Tobi said to Kisame.

"Point is, they said something about a kage, and went south," Kisame said, hitting Tobi on the shoulder. Tobi tried to hit him back, but Itachi was between them in an instant, holding them back.

"Save your strength, you fools. You're gonna need all your energy." he said, glaring at each one in turn. Diedara turned around and watched the goings on with growing interest.

"So tell me about the situation, Itachi. You show up out of nowhere with a girlfriend in tow, and now you're telling them to save their energy because they'll need it. What's up?" Diedara asked. Itachi turned his head and looked at Diedara over his shoulder. He then turned his head back around and looked at the floor, lowering his arms. He siged.

"Orochimaru's men attacked us in the woods. I had initially planned on ignoring it and coming back here, but it won't work out that way. I have the feeling that you-" he turned to look at you, then continued "-are going to be more trouble than you're worth," he said. "We don't have the time to waste on sitting around idly. Orochimaru's never bothered me before, so he must know about Kokoroyoi's heritage, and that would mean that now we have an escort mission on our hands. I was thinking we would take her to a nearby village, but then again, there is a man at the Village Hidden in the Leaves who would know more about what to do with her than we would," Itachi said. Kisame looked confused.

"What heritage?" he asked.

"She's a Chie," Itachi said. There was a sudden hush in the room, and even Diedara appeared taken aback.

"But, but..." Tobi's voice was confused, but it was hard to tell what he was feeling because his face was covered by a mask. You put your ocarina away and started to speak.

"It's true my family is all dead, and I'm sure you all know why. But my father hid me in the forest before he was killed, and my friend sacfrificed herself to save me. So here I am." you say to them, crossing your arms in front of your chest. You stare straight ahead of you, waiting for someone to speak. The hushed silence continued until Kisame spoke up.

"So if she's a Chie, and Orochimaru's after her now, then we are required to keep her safe on her way to the Hidden Leaf Village because...?" he asked Itachi.

"Because if she decides to go and use her power on Orochimaru it's bad news for all of us. We all know what he would do, and what he would in turn do to us after that. We can't just get on with our lives if she and Orochimaru are still alive at the same time." Itachi answered Kisame.

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